What is the Recipe of Emotion?
I have alexithymia. What is that? Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and then picture the person or thing or pet you love most in the world and run up and embrace them. You get a warm feeling from that embrace, and you can name that feeling and understand it. Now take that feeling and toss it away. Now, what does that feel like? Emptiness. People with alexithymia are unable to identify, understand and express their emotions and other people's emotions. The sensations that one feels when experiencing an emotion are still felt in people with alexithymia, such as butterflies in the stomach; we are just unable to understand what that feeling is and unable to identify it, so we ignore it.
Alexithymia is not a bad thing to have in certain situations, but for the most significant, most important moments, it hurts because we cannot express what we feel or identify what others feel, which brings emptiness to the occasion and a feeling of regret for missing a moment that could have been. So how can we better identify, understand and express emotions? The arts. We use the body as a tool to communicate through dance and record it on a canvas to get a picture of that emotion.
Iván Akiri ‘22
Advisors: Emily Baird, Theatre and Dance; Daren Kendall and Bridget Murphy Milligan, Studio Art
All images copyright © 2022 Iván Akiri. All rights reserved.
Alexithymia (performance) 2021
Performances in collaboration with Sarah Brunot, Abby Aitken, Byron Hollander, Madison Mycoff, and Zoe Seymore, photo by Matt Dilyard
The 8 Laban Efforts, Canvas, tempera paint, 4' 2" x 6' 10", 2022
Alexithymia, Canvas, tempera paint, 12' x 30', 2021
Live Event • Ebert Art Center • 4/28/22 • 4-6pm